I’m now the happy owner of www.craftlog.org! A domain of my own, cool. There are a few other pages out there calling themselves craftlogs, so I figured I should grab it before someone else did. Everything’s still stored at huangfamily, which isn’t going anywhere. It’s all just a redirect, so no need to change your links or anything.

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My weak contribution to Tie One On. I don’t know why I thought the gingham was Home-on-the-Range-y, but now that I sewed it all up, it looks more diner-y. Oh well. Hopefully the “range” photo staging helps make up for it.

The apron and matching scarf are a freehanded pattern with bias trim and ties. I found the apparently handmade top in with a bunch of old doll clothes the last time I was home. The skirt I made from a piece of lace off an old slip.

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My travel project this summer, knit on trains and planes all over the place. Slightly less than 1 skein Patons Divine, 10 mm needles, 15 stitches across, in garter stitch, of all things. I actually really like the way the garter stitch looks on it, not that you can tell from my fantastic photograph. Also, the needles are too big for it, so the stitches are nice and open and it’s going to stretch longer than it is now. I am keeping this scarf for myself in anticipation of the long Jersey winter, which doesn’t sound half bad about now.

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This is one of the buttons in the treasure trove of old buttons I got when I went home a while back. It’s strung on doubled gold wire, twisted together in back and covered with tape to hide the prickly ends. It’s pretty tight to keep the button from sliding around too much.

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I finally got all the blogs I follow into Bloglines. I don’t know why I didn’t switch a long time ago. My former system was folders of bookmarks, categorized into everyday and occasionally. I would open up all the bookmarks and look at each site for something new. Really time-consuming. Now, I go to Bloglines and all the new entries from all my feeds are right there on the same page. I will probably go to the actual sites every once in a while to see the site design, sidebar links, etc.

If you’ve got a site, I’d recommend seeing how your feeds look in Bloglines. I found out one of mine went dead a few months ago (not that I’ve figured out how to fix it yet…) Also, some sites don’t have full entry feeds. I didn’t subscribe to any of them. I don’t like the excerpts, although I’m thinking of making a craftlog excerpt feed for the folks that do.

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Wow, Renegade was great. There was a lot of reworked vintage stuff, like, say, pouches made from old sheets and tableclothes. I don’t know where people find all their great fabric. Also lots of wonderful silkscreening. I’m totally inspired to pull out the Gocco to make some shirts or whathaveyou. It was really a wide variety of crafts.

Just like my visit to Magpie (they were there too), one fun thing was seeing web things in real life. I got to say hello to a few of the people I read on the web, too: Qylaar, Boygirlparty, Momomoogie, My Paper Crane, Wonderland Q, purldrop, seamripper, gosh so many. Oddly, I only bought a to-do pad I’d been eyeing from Boygirlparty. It’s for my crafty lists:

Mark got a felt ninja patch from Momomoogie that he’s going to put on his computer bag:

He had a good time too, but thought there was too much irony for sale.

I also have a bag full of business cards from other folks I really liked. It’ll take a while to sort through them, though.

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I’m off to Renegade Craft Fair. If you are not lucky enough to live a trainride away from Brooklyn, you should go to their website and browse all the vendors’ web sites. It’s overwhelming.

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4-nail knitting spool cord + vintage button

I’m thinking a bow for a gift or something. FYI, tiny crochet hook is way better than a little knitting needle for pulling up loops.

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I tried to make Blythe a fishnet stocking with my fun knitting spool. I used sewing thread with an 8-poster in the hopes of making a tube big enough to fit over Blythe’s legs. You can see the result of this experiment below. Main problem, the tube was not wide enough. I dropped a stitch in the back to make it go on this far. Also, the thread tube is really hard to handle. It’s easy to snag and pull out of shape. Also, Blythe’s legs are made out of this kind of sticky plastic, so it required some pulling to get them on, further aggravating the snagging problem. Anyway, I think I will abandon this line of work and make Blythe stockings out of fabric instead.

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Bernie, my dad, used to draw cartoons for me and my sisters when we were little. They mostly featured the adventures of Bernie the Worm, an orange, smiley worm. He had some friends like stick and rock and Carlos Castaneda. So, since I haven’t mailed his father’s day gift yet, I made this to throw in with it. Made on my new 6-nail knitting spool with more thrifted yarn from my sister and a little pipe cleaner inside for posable worm action. I didn’t notice until I’d already made it that it conveniently doubles as a Month of Softies bug.

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